Although these were small acquisitions (both in the $80 million range), they were notable as Check Point rarely makes acquisitions. Check Point has been one of the leaders in combatting threats that go through a firewall, but more hackers are now finding ways to get around perimeter security. These acquisitions help Check Point’s customers fight the security fight on other fronts.

Lacoon is a mobile security solution for Android and Apple devices. Mobile device management (MDM) has been a hot market over the past five years, and Check Point hasn’t been able to participate in it. Lacoon’s differentiator is that it has a cloud-based analytic engine.

Cisco, the industry’s largest security vendor, was lagging behind many of its competitors just a few years ago. This year was a big one for Cisco security, spending more than $1 billion in two major acquisitions.

In June, Cisco announced plans to acquire OpenDNS for $635 million, an important component of the Security Everywhere initiative that Cisco announced at Cisco Live in June. OpenDNS is a cloud service that protects customers from connecting to dangerous websites by offering security DNS services.

HP, or HP Enterprise as it’s known now, announced in February it was acquiring Aruba Networks for $3 billion. This was a significant move for HPE for a number of reasons. First, the company does have a broad networking portfolio, but it did lack a credible wireless solution. Aruba has been duking it out with Cisco for technology leadership for years, and has a great portfolio that includes a robust management software, strong integrated security, analytic tools, and everything else needed to help its customers maximize the potential of Wi-Fi. Additionally, HPE inherits some great talent, including Aruba CEO Dominic Orr, to run HP Networking, and Aruba’s founder, CTO, and one of the smartest guys I know, Keerti Melkote.

Avago has strength in wireless communications, enterprise storage, wired infrastructure, and industrial equipment. Broadcom chips are used primarily in wired networking devices and Apple and Samsung smartphones. The combined organization will be the third largest U.S. semiconductor supplier, behind Intel and Qualcomm, and sixth largest in the world.

Continuing the chip theme, 2015 also saw Intel pony up $16.7 billion for Altera. The two companies are long-time partners and had collaborated on chip design in the past. In the press release announcing the acquisition, Intel stated it would be using Altera’s FPGAs for high-performance computing products, IoT products, and data center infrastructure, all markets in which Intel has steadily been gaining share. This will help Intel keep the momentum going.

EMC has been building a nice portfolio of companies in its Federation. In May, it added managed cloud services company Virtustream for $1.2 billion. Virtustream is a nice addition to the other Federation companies, including VMware, RSA, and VCE. The managed services and consulting services from Virtustream can be the glue that ties the public and private cloud solutions together.

As a Canadian, the thing that makes me saddest is the fact a Canadian team hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since 1993. Second on my list is the demise of BlackBerry. The company that once ruled the world of mobility has found itself fighting for its life.

In September, BlackBerry announced it was acquiring Good for $425 million. Typically, I’m not a fan of two struggling companies merging, since that normally leads to one larger organization that suffers the same struggles. However, in this case, there is some logic and potential to the merger. If BlackBerry has an area of strength today, it’s security, and the addition of Good can help it catch the mobile security wave.

In April, Nokia announced it was planning to acquire Alcatel-Lucent for $16.5 billion, bringing together the wireless strengths of Nokia and the wireline assets of Alcatel-Lucent. Given the growth of 4G, the transition to VoLTE, and the fact we are becoming a mobile-first world, it’s important that vendors come to market with an end-to-end, core-to-radio network solution. Currently, the only two vendors that can offer this are ZTE and Huawei. Nokia-ALU will pose a viable alternative.

For Citrix, the year started off with a bang as it announced it was acquiring Sanbolic in January. The acquisition provides Citrix the technology to virtualize and “software-define” various storage types, including SAN, NAS, SSD, and flash. With Sanbolic, Citrix can come to market with a broader software-defined data center story.

To address the growing complexity in IT, more vendors are coming to market with integrated, turnkey solutions with validated designs. Dell and EMC can do that, whereas each alone could only do so through partnership (although partnering is a viable strategy).

The acquisition has raised all kinds of questions about the fate of VMware, what it means for technology partners, and how customers should deal with it. We won’t really know the answers to these until 2016 or later, so there’s more to expect out of the Dell/EMC camp.